Your LinkedIn presence can have three pillars:
1. organic content: posting stuff on your personal profile. This includes commenting.
2. advertising content: paying to put content in front of your target audience (with company profile)
3. making connections – growing your network (through your personal profile)
Most companies are scared advertising on LinkedIn, because they don’t have an understanding of how it can play out.
Then, there are loads of people, who use the network exclusively for no. 3. Somewhat less use it exclusively for no. 1, without putting much emphasis on no. 3 (that used to be me!)
Guess what the best of the best do?
Yup, they use all three. And they have back-end mechanisms to capture the demand.
It becomes apparent that in order to use LinkedIn to its fullest, you need to have people who are active with pillars 1 and 3… because companies cannot make personal connections, only individuals can.
Another learning here: LinkedIn is both a sales and marketing tool. To be successful as either a sales or marketing gal or guy, you need to adopt both a sales and a marketing mindset.
Here’s what I mean: traditionally, putting out content has been a marketing thing while reaching out and making new connections is alien to most marketers – it’s a sales thing.
The fact that you need to be doing both is just another piece of evidence of sales-marketing convergence.
